I will invoke them, one by one, to see if they will walk through that doorway under the dancing bear. It would be nice to see them all. At the end of this chapter I will have chosen my first guest. I can picture him already, seated quietly in what was the snug, away from all the noise and hubbub. He will have a bottle of stout before him, and he will engage the barman briefly and crisply in a conversation about a disfigurement which also marked the original landlord at the Blue Angel, namely a gammy peeper, a wonky watcher, a pooped planet swimming about in a black hole.
The preamble is over and we’re on the home straight. Let me say a few things about myself. I am a child of my times, and in the patois of my times, I will tell you that I go on this quest to find myself. No, don’t panic. I mean the words quite literally, for somewhere along the way I lost myself I am retracing my steps, for I have been parted with a number of items.
First, my physical self. As I have told you, I am 47 years old, which means that there is virtually nothing left of the infant born so many (yet so few) years ago. Less than ten per cent, in fact, such is the rate of our cellular degeneration and regeneration. About 87% of me is less than ten years old. So I am not the person I used to be.
Second, my spirit, my soul, my persona, call it what you will – that has also been borrowed by various people, so that very little remains which is mine. I am a collection of other people’s memories and anecdotes, little else. I thought I knew everything about myself – it turns out that others know far more. So I have borrowed back what little’s left of me for this final jaunt, maybe so that I can have a few memories just to myself – a little share option between me and the public corporation which is Me Dot Com.
Those memories. They’re beginning to fade already. Talking to fishermen on the banks of the mile-wide Dee at Connah’s Quay, with the giant Corus steelworks laid out over the river like a sleeping giant, Gulliver dressed in blue and tethered to the alluvium. The fish have voted with their fins, I am told mournfully.
I will go back to meet myself at different points, to renovate and repaint each memory... I will go back to a sloping field along Offa’s Dyke, near Presteigne, to see the most spectacular rowan tree I have ever seen: so perfectly proportioned, so magnificently berried, so fully leaved that I sat and looked at it with complete admiration, suspecting that this was the idealised mother of all Welsh mountain trees: the original matrix and progenitor, which if pulped and made into paper would provide us with all the lost words and all the lost stories of Wales, words appearing magically on the seagull-white quires.
We have reached a watershed in the Vogel story.
America has been mined and our ship has returned, laden with ore. Mr Vogel had undoubtedly been to America, where he had started a violin factory and got hitched. For an unknown reason he then fled, abandoning a wife and an infant daughter.
We do not know where he went. We can be certain, however, that at one stage in his life he was a patient at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Hospital at Gobowen in Shropshire. Gobowen is a rapidly-growing village near Oswestry, about two miles from the Welsh border. Oswestry was one of those border towns which the English and Welsh fought over for centuries, like two dogs scrapping for a bone, and one can still hear Welsh spoken there, occasionally, on market days. On the outskirts, to the north, there is a completely magnificent Celtic hill fort. To the south is Sweeney Hall, home of a very real John Parker, who became a minister in two Welsh parishes. He was one of the early Welsh travellers and a great lover of our little country. If he was ‘nosy’ it was in a very nice way, and the author of the Vogel Papers did him a great disservice. I wonder why? I’m told there was a real Julius Rodenberg too, and that he wrote a charming book about his visit to Wales.
I think we need to tie up some loose ends before we pursue the young Mr Vogel, relentlessly and unflinchingly, to Gobowen Hospital.
I started the story of the Bonesetters of Anglesey on the island’s shore, after a storm, with the smuggler Dannie Lukie rescuing two small naked boys. One of them, Evan Thomas, became famous for curing animals and people of bone maladies. He treated the high and the low, the rich and the poor, on a ‘pay what you can’ basis. Evan’s gift passed on to his son Richard, and we have an anecdote about him too:
On one occasion a passenger, a man of some substance, travelling on the Holyhead to London stagecoach, suffered an injury while the horses were being changed at Gwindy. Advised by a bystander of the prowess of Richard he sent a message summoning him. However, when the bonesetter arrived in his home-made tweed suit and mounted on an ugly old mare, the passenger was shocked by his dishevelled appearance and curt manner and refused even to be examined by him. Whilst the local people were protesting to the stranger about his illogical attitude Richard, unobserved, left the scene to return home. At last the injured man was persuaded how foolish he had been and someone was despatched to try and catch up with the bonesetter. When they did so they failed completely to entice him back. No-one, not even the monarch himself, would be forgiven for treating him with contempt.
Richard’s seven children all went on to practise bonesetting in one degree or another. Two of the daughters emigrated to the United States and practised their art there, according to Hywel Jones, an authority on the bonesetters.
The whole lot of them were proud and quick-tempered, and all of them had an exceptionally strong grip. Some doctors recognised their talents, but most were antipathetic and this hostility honed the family’s proud temperament. They were intensely religious and had dominating characters with a sardonic sense of humour. They were quick to take offence and long in forgiving. The family had a physical characteristic – a defect in the little finger. This was generally described as a crooked little finger. Hywel Jones says:
I had some interesting correspondence with a lady from Wisconsin, USA, who was anxious to claim herself as a direct descendant and was overjoyed when I told her about the anomaly, for she had a crooked little finger.
Richard’s son Evan walked the hundred or so miles to Liverpool, with the apparent intention of emigrating to America, but whilst still making up his mind he found work in a foundry. Here, accidents were so common that his abilities were soon called upon and he eventually set up a practice. Again, I quote:
It was a time of great industrial development in Liverpool, particularly in the area of the docks and his work increased rapidly. At first his patients were mostly dock workers, seamen and labourers but his reputation soon spread and people of all classes were before long to be found sitting on the bare painted wooden benches in his drab waiting room. He was a dour, silent man with no trace of humour and his command of the English language was so poor that normal conversation with his patients was at a premium. The Anglesey bonesetters were always regarded as hard men, impervious to the suffering they caused... but Evan did at least attempt some form of alleviation. In order to try to distract his patient’s attention from the inevitable pain he was about to evoke he had his own musical box and, as he prepared for manipulation, his manservant would wind up the machine in readiness for the moment of action. Another counter attraction was the parrots. Evan had one or two of these birds in his consulting room and one can imagine their competing with the shrieks of the unfortunate patients.
Other doctors became jealous of his success, and since he was unqualified, they set out to make life difficult for him. Nine times he appeared in court, accused of malpractice, and each time he was acquitted. He was arraigned on a charge of manslaughter, and was again acquitted; the people of Liverpool, incensed by the malicious harassment he had suffered, met him as he returned home from court to congratulate him. When he stepped from the ferry at Seacombe he was met by a large crowd and a brass band playing See the Conquering Hero Comes. He was carried shoulder-high to his carriage. But Evan realised that the day of the unqualified practitioner was over and that his five sons could not continue the family tradition without a formal qualification.
His eldest son, Hugh Owen Thomas (who
m I will call Hotty, because of his initials) was to take the family into new territory. He was brought up in Anglesey, and whilst walking on the beach at Rhoscolyn he was hit in the left eye by a stone which permanently maimed him; consequently he wore a peaked cap to hide this disfigurement. After schooling he went on to qualify at Edinburgh, at roughly the same time as Joseph Lister, whose pioneering work with antiseptics saved many lives.
Hotty went on to set up his own practice in Nelson Street, Liverpool. Incidentally, he was an agnostic, which was most strange given his family history.
He was a busy man, having been appointed medical officer to many clubs and societies such as the shipwrights, ironworkers and boilerworkers and he also treated many seamen. He devised ingenious splints, was violently opposed to superfluous amputations, and believed strongly in the powers of complete rest and fresh air. I particularly like this description, by Hywel Jones, of this amazing little man, who worked like a Trojan to save those around him.
... he was a striking figure commanding attention more by his personality than by any personal attributes. He was small in stature, thin and pale, with dark grey eyes capable of great expression and a slight dark moustache and pointed beard. No description of Hugh Owen Thomas would be complete without mentioning his peaked cap, to shelter his tender eye, his closely buttoned frock coat and the inevitable cigarette dangling from his lips. Today it is fashionable to criticise doctors who smoke, but he would have refuted such an attitude as monstrous. He firmly believed that his miraculous escape from contracting cholera whilst he worked day and night in the ghastly slums of Liverpool during the great epidemic of 1864 was attributable to his habit of continuous smoking. This may be the one and only instance where his beliefs proved to be incorrect! He was rapid and sudden in all he did, as if there wasn’t a moment to lose. He would fire questions at patients in quick succession and sometimes, if particularly hurried, would start his interrogation even as he ascended the stairs. Though abrupt in manner there was an overlying tone of kindness in his voice and he was beloved by children.
We have a description of 11 Nelson Street by the American surgeon Dr John Ridlon:
I was in a narrow room with shelves of medicine bottles on the left, and a stained counter-shelf below on which sat a crying child supported by its mother, whilst strapping the child’s feet into iron splints was a thin, sallow little man dressed in black, with a cap with a glazed peak cocked over one eye, thick lensed spectacles, a ragged brindle beard and a cigarette in his mouth.
When the child stopped crying I stepped forward and handed him my card. He read it aloud and asked: ‘What can I do for you? I am Mr Thomas.’
I said: ‘Mr Thomas, I have read your book on the Hip, Knee and Ankle, and I have come three thousand miles to find out whether I am a fool, or you a liar’.
There was a twinkle behind the thick lenses and then he said: ‘I think we’ll find that out in half an hour.’ Thus began two wonderful days...
Hotty was childless. He needed someone to continue the tradition, so he and his wife ‘adopted’ Robert Jones, who would go on to revolutionize orthopaedics, save thousands of lives in the Great War, and help found a hospital. Robert Jones was Hotty’s nephew
Hotty was the last of the Anglesey Bonesetters. But, miraculously, the gift brought to these shores by two shipwrecked boys now passed, like the Olympic torch, to a new bearer, who was to prove himself the fastest runner of all.
Today, 11 Nelson Street is revered as the birthplace of modern orthopaedic surgery in Britain. In Hotty’s day it was an extraordinarily busy place. At six o’clock in the morning he was already on his rounds, riding behind two beautiful horses. He visited a dozen patients before his breakfast, always a cup of tea and a couple of bananas.
During the morning he saw 30 to 40 patients. Long experience enabled him to make a quick diagnosis, and his examination, though rapid, was very gentle. Hotty had a blacksmith at work in the smithy, a saddler finishing off various splints, and others making plasters, bandages and dressings.
There were other cases to treat in the afternoon, and after his evening meal he hurried from the table to see his evening flock, who continued to come until eight o’clock. In spite of his strenuous day he remained bright and cheerful, and he loved to chat. At eight he went on his last round, and from 9.30 to 12 he either worked in his lathe room – fitted with the most up-to-date machinery – making new surgical implements or repairing old ones, or he went to the library to read and write.
It’s wondrous how he could work under such pressure for over thirty years, for he never took a holiday, even on Sundays, when he had his free clinic, attended by up to 200 cases from all parts.
Hotty died at the age of 56 after travelling to Runcorn to attend a patient; he had a fever when he started, and a long wait in a cold railway station brought on pneumonia. The Lancet mourned him thus:
A grief so profound and widespread as that which was manifested in Liverpool on the tenth instant when the remains of Dr Hugh Owen Thomas were laid to rest, is seldom witnessed. There can be no more eloquent or touching testimony of the worth of a man’s character than the tears of the poor among whom he lived. The toilers at our docks and warehouses are not insensitive beings, and the daily struggle of their lives is too earnest to admit of much display of sentiment. To see thousands of these, then, men as well as women, as anyone might have done in Liverpool last Saturday, stirred to their very depths by an emotion that found expression in passionate sobs and tears, as they lined the streets or pressed forward to gaze into the open grave, proves that its silent occupant had won his way to their hearts.
Dr Hugh Owen Thomas, I invite you to be the first guest at our party.
THE MYTH OF THE CAVE
THERE IS A TRADITION in Welsh poetry called canu llatai in which the poet sends a bird, an animal or a fish to salute his lover (only the birds can talk, however). Sometimes, but not always, he has been hindered or imprisoned and cannot get to her. Mostly, though, it’s a literary device, the medieval equivalent of sending a kissogram.
Today I sent a letter containing a poem and a tormentil – that beautiful, unpretentious little yellow flower which shows its sunny yellow head all over Wales – to my Emmeline across the sea.
I was devious, as was Dafydd ap Gwilym (the greatest of Welsh poets) over 600 years ago, when he was up to the same tricks, fooling credulous husbands.
This is what I did: I put myself on the Wales Tourist Board’s mailing list, implanted my message in one of the board’s promotional letters, then re-stickered and re-posted the envelope with Emmeline’s name and address – clever eh?
You may remember the prioress, Madam Eglentyne, in the Canterbury Tales, who wore a brooch bearing the words Amor Vincit Omnia. Love Conquers All.
Unlike poor timid cowering Mr Vogel I will pursue love gloriously, I will sweep Emmeline from her brattish little husband and marry her in my own Welsh paradise.
Dafydd ap Gwilym sent a seagull, a woodcock and also the wind to woo his beloved. Another of our poets, Cynan, famously dispatched a goldfinch from his purgatorial hellhole in the trenches of the First World War, pleading with it to visit his home in Anglesey. The beginning of the poem is an exercise in nostalgia:
Nico annwyl, dos yn gennad
Drosof hyd at Gymru lan,
Hed o wlad y gwaed a’r clefyd
I ardaloedd hedd a chan
(Sweet finch, be my go-between with Wales, sweet dominion, Fly from blood and wounds to vales of peace and harmony.)
The earliest example of a bird-messenger in Welsh literature is an episode in the Mabinogi when Branwen sends a young starling from Ireland to alert her brother, the giant Bendigeidfran, that she is being treated cruelly at the Irish court.
Later, after her rescuers’ poignant return and Branwen’s death from a broken heart on the banks of the river Alaw, they arrive at Harlech and hold a feast lasting seven years, during which time the three magical birds of Rhiannon sing a song of enchantment.
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And a scintillation of memories return to me, of the birds I have met on my walk. Goldfinches everywhere in thistledown flocks, carried on the wind like antic dots, their reds and yellows and blacks merging into a drunken amalgam of whirring brilliance. Wheatears and stonechats in the uplands, watchful in the heather and the gorse. Brown pipits plebeian in the aeolian grasses. Larks tremulous on the wing, singing a song of enchantment over Wales. And every crow was Arthur returning from Afallon to lead the Welsh nation to glorious resurgence.
The choughs of the west coast, sentinels of the cliffs, chiding me, their bright orange beaks an emblazoned badge of their special status. In mid-Wales I saw red kites hold sway over their dominion. On the cliffs south of Aberystwyth, on a cloudphalanxed morning of breezy, unrepentant optimism, I had been attacked by a buzzard; there was not a tree in sight, but sometimes they nest on cliffs, and presumably I was near its chick. The first intimation I had of its presence was a great whoosh and a feathery flick on my head. It was really scary. The noise created by its Stuka-like descent had a thrumming, vibrating reediness as the wind passed through each strut of its feathering: every primary, secondary, tertial, covert and scapular. I grew increasingly scared; this bombardment created a paranoia and a sense of oppression and fear – later my thoughts went to the countless ambushes which took place in old Wales.
Gerald of Wales, in his famous tour of the country with Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1188 to drum up support for yet another futile crusade, records many such incidents: